


dawn's first light

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 10:21:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10762290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Jemma is rescued by the local vigilante. It might end there if she didn't recognize him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There's nothing graphic in this and nothing the show wouldn't have done even in its earlier seasons, but there is a very bad man making some unfiltered threats so be warned.
> 
> Written for the prompt Robbie/Jemma + heal from shineyma.

“This is about sending a message,” Mr. Santoro says while he paces between one shaft of moonlight and the next. “This is about making it clear to everyone out there that this is our territory.”

By _this_ he means Jemma’s current predicament. She’s sitting rather uncomfortably in the middle of the garage, only a few feet from where Santoro is pacing. Her shoulders are growing numb from the way she has to hold them to avoid letting the ziptie cut into her wrists. Which is just silly, honestly; she is quite literally surrounded by Santoro’s men and in the heart of his operation. They could release her and it wouldn’t increase her chances of escaping one iota.

She jumps when the tire iron Santoro is holding strikes the floor between her feet. He’s squatting in front of her, head tipped to one side and a look of false concern on his face. “Am I boring you, doctor?”

Santoro thinks that because he runs a profitable drug running operation and because he has her at his mercy, he is fearsome. And he’s right. Jemma is absolutely afraid of the pain she will suffer tonight before she dies.

But she also knows herself. She has looked death in the face. She has endured torture at the hands of a man she once called friend. He might be able to kill her, but he won’t break her.

“You are,” she says coolly. “No offense, I’m sure it’s a rousing speech, but it’s quite obviously for your men.” She nods to the tool chest nearby, the one with its drawers open, revealing all sorts of exacting instruments. “That is for me.”

He smiles, sharp and predatory. Despite her unfortunate familiarity with such looks, her heart pounds. “Clever girl.”

“Yes. I am.” She lifts her chin and focuses on a spot over his head. It won’t last. She knows from experience that soon she will be unable to focus on anything but him and whatever tool he chooses to use on her. But for now, it is an excellent method of infuriating him. “I recommend getting on with it. Wouldn’t want your men still cleaning up my blood during business hours.”

As expected, Santoro’s face turns a satisfying shade of purple. “No,” he says tightly, “we wouldn’t want that.” He tosses the tire iron into the shadows and walks to the tool chest. “I plan on leaving your head in front of the clinic as a warning, so this’ll need to be done before dawn.”

A twinge of regret rolls through her. Not over the grisly display - which will doubtless scar whoever is unlucky enough to discover it - but now that he mentions the dawn, she’s sorry to miss it. She’d rather die while the sun shines down on her, if at all possible.

He turns back to her, holding a very long, very thin knife that she can’t imagine is part of any standard toolset. Whatever horrid - and likely cliché - threat he plans on making next is cut off by the thunderous rattle of one of the metal doors. It shakes for long, drawn out seconds while outside a man screams in pathetic agony.

And then … silence.

Empty, terrifying silence during which every man in the room raises his sidearm towards the door. A clatter sounds, so sudden and so much softer than the earlier booming that Jemma jumps. It was the lock, she realizes when the door begins rolling up, but that thought only lasts a moment because the man who enters the garage demands all of her attention.

Dark and bright all at once, the sort of figure that would have primitive men falling to their knees in supplication. Its empty eyes sweep the room even while Santoro’s men pepper it with bullets. Those glowing sockets land on her, and her heart leaps into her throat when the fire consuming the creature intensifies.

Men begin to move. Some run for exits while others follow Santoro’s orders to attack hand-to-hand. One knocks Jemma’s chair off its feet in his hurry and, restrained as she is, she can only go down with it. Her head strikes the concrete hard. She sees stars.

Time must pass without her knowing. The sounds of screams - horrible, agonized screams that leave fear twisting in her gut - blur together until she’s shocked by the return of silence. She screams herself when her wrists are released and feeling surges back into her arms.

Strong hands grip her shoulders, hurting and helping her at once. She focuses on keeping her dinner down and is grateful she only had enough time to eat a granola bar between patients.

She’s sweating. Fire burns nearby. She looks up into the eyeless face of the skull.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so primitive to beg for mercy, she thinks while her animal brain struggles between the futility of fighting and the impossibility of running. The disagreement leaves room for reason and, concussed as she is, she latches onto the most absurd detail of this encounter: the pattern of the cracks running from the frontal cranial bone back into the parietal bone and possibly beyond.

She’s seen that pattern before. Not as deep and certainly not spitting fire, but she’s seen it.

The pain in her head is growing the longer she stares at the pattern of the firelight and she can feel her limbs growing heavy. She digs her fingers into the stiff leather of his jacket, but she can feel herself slipping sideways.

“Robbie?” she manages while she falls.

She hears his gasp, sees a flash of his familiar face amid the flames, and then she’s gone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She wakes up in her bed, in her room, in her apartment. When she springs for the gun she keeps hidden between the mattress and the wall, it’s still there. And so is her headache. She moans into her pillow, allowing herself five whole seconds of wallowing in agony before forcing herself up.

It’s day. The sun’s shining through her curtains. She survived the night. Somehow.

She adds that to her long list of questions - including how she got home, what happened to Santoro, and what the Ghost Rider was doing there - while she carefully strips out of her filthy scrubs, all ruined beyond repair by the fluids from the garage floor. They’re stiff and sticking and it’s a relief to toss them into the bin and trade them for her soft sweats.

And thinking of the Ghost Rider, he’s _real_. Up to now she thought him an urban legend or, at the very most, an exaggeration of a vigilante, a west coast version of those ones springing up all over New York. But he was very real when he burst in to save her and certainly lived up to the hype. Exceeded it, even.

She wonders, not for the first time, whether she ought to contact-

The thought drops off the moment she opens her bedroom door. Robbie Reyes is sitting on her couch.

“Oh,” she says. She’d forgotten her last-minute realization that it was _him_ who came to her rescue. It seems absurd but after last night, she thinks she’s entitled to a little bit of selective memory loss.

Robbie doesn’t react. He’s sitting there, hands between his knees, staring at her like he’s expecting her to tell him his dog just died.

Which is, frankly, rude. _He’s_ the vigilante gifted, running all over LA, killing gangsters and rooting out criminals. Shouldn’t he have something to say for himself?

She sighs and makes for the kitchen. “Tea?”

She can hear him scrambling to his feet behind her, but doesn’t give him her attention. Either he’ll answer or he won’t, either way she’s making tea.

Unfortunately there’s not much to keep herself occupied with once she’s set the water to warming and chosen a blend that will sooth her aching head. She readies two cups and sets them carefully on the counter before lifting her eyes to him again.

He’s on the other side of the island, standing at a distance like he’s afraid to come nearer.

“Well?” she asks, figuring one of them has to speak.

“Are you okay?”

It’s not an explanation, but at least it proves he’s capable of speech. “I have what I’m guessing is a mild concussion-” she angles one of her wrists towards him, showing the dark mark running around it, “a few bruises and scrapes. But I wasn’t the one shot multiple times.”

He looks down at himself. “It heals. The Rider- Everything heals.”

“Useful.” It comes out colder than she means it to. She has questions, a million of them brimming just beneath the surface, but she doesn’t ask a one. The truth is she has no right to answers.

He saved her life, that should be more than enough.

“Listen,” he says, stepping forward to brace his hands on the edge of the island, “I’m sorry if I scared you. I know the Rider can be … a lot to handle. But you were safe, I promise.”

“All right.”

She means it as an agreement, but he looks as though she’s struck him.

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

She sets her own hands on the counter, mirroring him. When she lifts her shoulders in a shrug, the muscles pull, reminding her of the time she spent restrained last night. “What else is there? You brought me home when you could have done to me whatever you did to those men-”

“No!” he says, looking furious she’d even suggest it.

“-and it’s not as though you owe me an explanation. You saved my life, you didn’t show up in my waiting room asking me to take a look at your spontaneous combustion problem.”

He’s not one of her patients. He’s not even what she’d call a friend. She sees him twice a month when he brings Gabe in for his PT sessions and they engage in sometimes friendly, sometimes flirty chit-chat but that’s all.

She doesn’t understand why he’s suddenly so angry with her or even why she’s angry at him in return.

The water is boiling behind her, has been for far too long. She turns her back on him to cut off the gas and dump out the water, then bends over the sink while she refills the pot.

Those questions she has? They’re what a SHIELD agent would ask. But she’s not that, hasn’t been for a while now. Three hundred and sixty-two days, in fact. This weekend will be a full year since she left the Playground. Perhaps she’s angry he’s reminded her of who she used to be.

Fingers against the skin above her waistband startle her. She turns, but Robbie’s hand flattens over her side, holding her. He’s close. So close he could…

But he doesn’t. He lifts her shirt and she knows exactly what he’s looking to see.

“It’s nothing,” she says, pushing the fabric down.

He fights her. His eyes are bright with an angry intensity that seems wrong on Gabriel Reyes’ doting older brother.

She smacks his hands away, twists out of his hold. “It wasn’t them!” she yells. Her voice comes out like a sob and her heart’s pounding more fiercely than it did last night. She reaches out to slam down the faucet before backing up again.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t’ve- I’ve got no right, it’s your business.”

She laughs. She can’t help it when he’s so accurately echoed her own thoughts. This is going to be a very long, very painful conversation if they both keep that attitude towards everything.

She wonders if there’s a polite way to ask the man who lately saved your life to _leave_.

“You said my name,” he says carefully. “Last night. How’d you know it was me?”

She steps back, puts the range between them, and rests her hip against the counter on the other side. “Some of your x-rays from the night of the accident got mixed in with Gabe’s file. There was some scarring, signs of old injuries.” She gestures to the top of her head. “But they weren’t, were they?” His silence is as good as an answer. “Do they reopen every time you…?”

“Yeah. It’s not so bad though. Like I said, everything heals.”

Just because it heals doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. But these are the questions she has no right to ask so she bites her tongue and keeps her concerns to herself.

“Gabe doesn’t know,” he says suddenly. “Nobody does.”

She smiles to herself. Now his awkward sticking around makes sense.

“I won’t tell.”

He seems to be warring with himself; poor thing is probably terrified she’ll expose his secret. And they really aren’t so close he can take her word for it.

She struggles not to laugh. He was so awe-inspiring last night and now he’s fidgeting in her kitchen, afraid of little old her. Which is doubly humorous since he has no idea she was ever anything more than a doctor.

That in mind, it’s easier to step closer to him. He seems startled she’d dare. “You saved my life,” she reminds him, and means to follow it up with a reassurance that she won’t betray his trust after that, but the reminder also serves to remind _her_ and she asks, “Why?”

He blinks, as surprised as she is by the sudden question.

“Not that I’m not grateful,” she says quickly, “but it seems rather convenient.” Her teasing smile fades as fear creeps along her veins, turning her blood to ice. “Did someone send you?” she asks softly. “Did someone order you to protect me?”

No. She knows it before he says anything at all; the confusion on his face is too immediate to be a put-on.

“One of Santoro’s men was dealing down by Jefferson. He tried to save his soul by telling me Santoro was planning on killing you.” It’s an ominous phasing, but she doesn’t bother to ask whether the information was worth the man’s life. It’s just another thing that isn’t her bother anymore. “Why?” he asks warily. “Should someone have sent me after you?”

All that shame and fear he’s been wearing so far is gone. This still isn’t the sweet, slightly timid Robbie she knows from Gabe’s sessions, but she does get the idea this one could be a secret superhero. A superhero who’s still in need of reassurance she’s not a threat to him.

Slowly, she lifts her shirt. Robbie just confessed that his skull routinely cracks open in a repeat of the night he nearly died and he’s going green at the sight of her scars.

“Before I came here,” she says slowly, careful to say only as much as she needs to, “I ran in some powerful circles. More so than Mr. Santoro.”

Robbie goes on staring. One of his hands lifts, hovering in the air between them. She can imagine how it would feel against the ruined skin - and how it wouldn’t feel in those places she no longer has nerve endings. She drops her blouse.

Robbie’s eyes lift to meet hers. “And they did this to you? These powerful people?” His voice is gruff and she can see indignation sparking in his eyes.

“My enemies did.”

“So you got out? Because you were scared?”

It’s not as simple as that. She would have been safer in the Playground than she is out in the world - last night proved that well enough - she could have spent the rest of her life holed up in the labs, safe as houses. But while the night she spent enduring Giyera and Ward’s tender mercies was traumatic, no doubt of that, it was what came after that decided her.

“I lost someone,” she says. “I promised him I’d save him and I failed. So I left.” Maybe it was cowardly, running away from her grief like that. She sometimes imagines Dr. Garner quietly agreeing in that way of his, but where he would follow it up with some kindly reassurance, her imagination has none to offer.

She quit. She abandoned her friends and SHIELD and her life, all because she couldn’t imagine living another day in her own skin.

“Yeah,” Robbie says softly. “I get that.” From the way his focus is directed inward, she gets he idea those aren’t empty words. 

He pulls out of himself to focus on her. “Is that why Santoro grabbed you? He was hired?” 

She shakes her head. “No. I just got in his way.” She may not be a SHIELD agent any longer, but she wasn’t about to keep quiet while Santoro’s men harassed anyone leaving the clinic’s NA meetings. It seems he took umbrage with that.

Robbie steps forward, coming close enough he can lay a hand on her shoulder. He’s warm. Not worryingly so, but in a way she’d think he just came in from a morning run, not that he’s been standing in her cool kitchen for the last quarter hour.

“You’ve got my number, right? Gabe’s emergency contact? You put it in your phone and you call me if those enemies of yours ever show back up.”

She considers telling him that Ward is dead and the thing that killed her hopes was killed by Fitz. But there’s an urgency to the order that worries her. “And you’ll do what?”

His lips twitch on one side in what could almost be a smile. “I’ll give ‘em what they deserve.”

In true vigilante fashion, he makes to leave on that note, stepping around her and heading for the door.

She doesn’t follow, but she does turn to ask, “Is that a promise or a bribe?”

He pauses. She thinks she might’ve taken some of the wind out of his sails, he’s got some of that fear back when he faces her. “A promise,” he says, sounding far more human than he did while making it. “You don’t owe me anything.”

It’s so exactly the right answer that she smiles. “And you don’t owe me anything. But I’ll keep your secret.”

He smiles back. It makes him look at least five years younger and the answering flutter in her heart startles her so badly she nearly doesn’t hear what he says. “I’ll keep yours too. Try not to piss off anymore drug dealers though, huh?”

And with that he leaves, giving her the privacy she desperately needs to wonder over the warmth in her chest she never thought she’d feel again.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anon requested “Take my jacket, it’s cold outside” for these two and I couldn't help turning it into a follow-up for this fic.

Robbie’s got one arm lifted, fire in his palm so he can read the labels on bottles when he senses someone behind him. His hackles rise—and the devil with them.

“If you leave now,” a familiar voice says, “I won’t shoot and I won’t press charges. If you don’t, I’ll have to use those bandages you’re stealing to stop you from bleeding out.”

He half-turns so she can see his face lit up by the fire.

“Oh, it’s you.” Jemma sags against the door frame and yep, that is a real gun in her hand.

“Who did you think it was?” he asks, hefting the flames a little higher. She shrugs like fire-powered guys in leather steal her drugs all the time.

He should really probably worry about how easily she slips the gun into the back of her jeans, but with the whole city gone dark there are bigger worries. She comes to stand next to him, peering curiously past his fire and into the box.

“You heal,” she says like it’s an accusation. “So what do you need these for?”

“Someone’s hurt,” he says. Obviously. Fucking _pendejo_. Like she can’t guess that her damn self.

Her hand wraps around his arm, just under his elbow. She’s stronger than she looks. And right now she looks more scared than he’s seen her, even that time he went all fire and fury to save her from the Italians.

“Gabe?” she asks.

Of course she’s worried about Gabe. Hell, _he’s_ worried about Gabe. Leaving him alone in the house on a night like this … his stomach’s gonna be in knots until he gets back. And leaving him alone with Daisy doesn’t help much. She’s public enemy number one. Half the guys tearing up LA tonight are looking to string her up.

He’s gotta get home.

He opens his mouth to reassure Jemma everything’s okay, but a sound in the hall cuts him off. He lets the fire go out a second before a woman steps in the doorway.

“Dr. Daniels?”

Robbie faces the wall. He can’t be recognized, this is Gabe’s clinic for God’s sake.

Jemma holds up a hand to block out the worst of the light from the woman's candle. “I’m fine, Eulalia. I’ll be back down in a minute. Careful on the stairs.”

Eulalia is slow to leave, but once she’s gone Jemma’s right back on Robbie.

“Clinic’s busy tonight, huh?” he asks before she can start in on him.

“It is. More so because we’re keeping patients on the ground floor for safety until the power’s back. Now what happened to Gabe?”

“Gabe’s fine. These are for a friend.” He makes for the door, sure Eulalia must’ve made it to the stairwell by now.

“Why didn’t you bring him here?” Jemma’s right behind him, so close she’s nearly tripping him.

“It’s not safe.” For Daisy or for anyone around her. He couldn’t bring her here.

She grabs his arm, spinning him around. “And you don’t know the first thing about medicine.”

“I know blood is supposed to stay inside your body. I’ll figure it out.”

Jemma shakes her head and dodges into the nearest room. This is the moment to head for the roof and get the hell out of here before she gets back. Daisy’s waiting.

But Robbie’s feet stay glued to the floor.

(Somewhere, in the back of his head, there’s a sound like a mocking voice.)

Jemma comes back out carrying a white case. “If your friend needs stitches, I’ll need this.”

“You’re not coming,” Robbie says automatically.

She gives him a _look_ , and he knows before she even says anything that he’s already lost. “From the sounds of it, your friend might have some very serious injuries. There are people all over this city dying because the people who _can_ help them don’t even know they’re in _need_ of help. Well I know about your friend, so I’m going to help.”

He takes a few seconds to pretend he might find a way out of this before giving up and stepping forward.

“What are you-?” she asks when he drops his box on the carpeted floor.

“It’s cold out there,” he says. He shrugs off his jacket and wraps it around her shoulders. “You’re gonna need this.”

She struggles to get it settled right over her shoulders. “Thanks,” she murmurs. He takes her kit, adds it to his box, and leads the way.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“She passed out,” Gabe says the second Robbie comes through the door. Jemma ducks under his arm and rushes in, grabbing a candle along the way to get a better look at Daisy.

She freezes on her knees next to the couch. Robbie thinks it might be the cut on her arm, maybe it’s worse than he thought and she needs more than Jemma can do for her here, but when he dodges around Gabe to set the box of supplies at Jemma’s side, he sees her eyes are on Daisy’s face.

“You okay?” he asks. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

“Oh my God,” Gabe mutters to himself. His wheels squeak when he turns for the kitchen.

“No. No, I’m fine. I just …” She smiles, but it strikes him as fake. Like the way she smiles at that Dr. Angulo who works the clinic with her. “It’s nothing. Can you boil me some water?”

“Sure.”

He heads for the kitchen and only makes it two steps in before Gabe is asking, “Seriously?”

“What?” He digs for their widest pot, the one Abuela used to cook chicken in. More surface area means more water heating up faster.

“You know what this looks like, right?”

Oh, boy. Guessing games. Just what he needs tonight. “No, Gabe, I do not know what it looks like. Why don’t you tell me?”

Gabe wheels over next to the stove. “It _looks_ like you brought the doctor— _my_ doctor—you’ve been flirting with for eight months to keep your creepy goth girlfriend from bleeding out on our couch.”

Robbie has no idea where to even start with that and spends so much time trying to figure it out that he’s gotta dump out half the pot.

“I’m not dating Daisy. She’s a friend. I’m fixing her van. She was with me when the power went out. Nothing going on there.”

“Uh huh.”

“And I don’t _flirt_ with Dr. Daniels. We just talk. About you.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m serious, Gabe. Nothing’s going on. With either of them.”

“Uh huh.”

“Stop _saying_ that.”

Gabe’s mouth snaps shut, but his eyes are clearly saying it all over again.

Robbie fiddles with the knob, turning the gas up a little more. The sooner this thing comes to a boil, the sooner he can take it in to Jemma. He grabs a candle and sets it in the open microwave, letting the light fall out so he can see the tiny bubbles forming on the bottom. If he could use his powers, it’d be boiling already.

But would that maybe make it bad? Is water purified by hellfire really pure?

“Did you see the look on Jemma’s face?” Gabe asks.

Oh, God, of course they couldn’t be done. Out of Gabe’s line of sight, Robbie presses his palm flat against the side of the pot to speed things along. It’s only gonna be like forty percent demon-purified, Daisy’ll be fine.

“She was freaked out by how bad the bleeding was,” he says. “I told her I could handle it on my own, she was probably expecting a papercut or something.”

“You didn’t tell her she was coming to help a _girl_ , did you? _That’s_ why she was freaked.”

She was looking at Daisy’s face when he came over. Maybe Gabe’s got a point.

No. _No_. Gabe does not have a point. Gabe has a weird obsession with getting Robbie to date his doctor.

“You’re crazy.”

“And you’re in denial. Why the hell else would she come all the way out here, in the middle of everything that’s happening, unless she liked you?”

“Because she took an oath to help people in need and I told her there was someone in need.” The water’s reached a rolling boil, and Robbie barely remembers to grab a couple pot holders before picking it up.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice she’s wearing your jacket,” Gabe snaps while Robbie heads into the living room.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jemma refuses to leave her patient even after she announces Daisy’s out of the woods. Which Robbie really should’ve expected and to be honest he’s relieved he doesn’t have to take her back out into that mess or leave her in it. She spends the night on the living room floor (Robbie tries to remember the last time he vacuumed it; sometime this year, he thinks), every once in a while grabbing Daisy’s good wrist to check her pulse.

Eventually he convinces Gabe the action’s done and he can go to bed, but he suspects Gabe spends most of the night listening at his wall for any drama.

Not that there’s gonna be drama. Daisy’s fine. The Watchdogs have no idea where they are. And all that stuff Gabe talked about is crap. Nothing there.

And yet for some reason Robbie hears himself asking, “Why’d you come?”

“What?”

He rests his elbows on his knees, leans forward. “You had plenty of other people to help. Why come with me?”

She looks over her shoulder at Daisy. “Because … because I was once someone who needed your help.”

He nods. He can respect that.

She’s weirdly serious when she meets his eyes again. “What do you know about this blackout?”

He shrugs. “Another blackout. They happen all the time. Usually don’t last this long, but-”

“A blackout that knocked out phones and cars?”

Yeah, that’s a little weird. “What are you getting at?”

She looks at Daisy again, but she’s still fast asleep. Robbie’s glad that Jemma’s still here; without her, he’d be freaking out that Daisy hasn’t so much as moved in hours.

“This seems less like a traditional blackout and more like an EMP attack,” Jemma says.

“Attack? You’re thinking terrorists?”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking.” She shakes her head. “You really haven’t thought about this?”

“No. But I will. If someone did this? On purpose? People are dying out there. There’s gonna be hell to pay.”

All Jemma’s seriousness drops off, replaced by a big old smile that warms him better than the fire in his bones. “You did not just say that.”

He shrugs.

All at once around them the power comes back. Lights click on, appliances start buzzing, the world comes back to life.

“Let there be light,” she says softly.

Robbie pushes out of his chair. “How about we check the news? See if they’re saying terrorists too?”

He catches her confused double-take between him and the TV.

“If we’re checking the news, why are you leaving?”

“Remote’s in the bathroom.”

She stares, waiting for more. He makes her ask.

“Why is it in the bathroom?”

“So you can turn the sound up and still hear the game while you’re in there.”

Jemma gapes at him. He only shrugs.

“Two guys live here.”

“I guess so.”

He heads down the hall and behind him a phone rings. “That mine or yours?” he calls. He should maybe worry about waking Gabe, but Gabe’ll probably be more pissed if he lets him sleep.

No answer.

“Jemma?”

Something a lot like fear claws at his gut. What if Daisy’s taken a turn? What if the Watchdogs found them?

But there are no Watchdogs when Robbie reaches the living room, and Jemma’s not working on Daisy. She’s just sitting on the floor, staring at her phone.

“What do you know about Daisy?” she asks.

“She’s a friend,” he says. It’s not really his place to say more. Jemma knows his secrets, sure, but Daisy’s are hers to keep.

“Yours? Or the Ghost Rider’s?”

Robbie’s spine stiffens. “What are you getting at?”

She squirms. Then squirms some more. Then he’s reaching down to help her up. She doesn’t let go of his hand.

“Do you remember when I told you I ran in powerful circles?”

Yeah. He also remembers the scars that running left her with. He looks at her phone, but the angle’s all wrong for him to read. Has the past finally come back to haunt her? Is he finally gonna get the chance to introduce her demons to his?

“I was an agent of SHIELD. Before and after the uprising.”

That … is something. Honestly not what he was expecting. He kinda thought she’d dated a psycho mob boss who didn’t wanna let her go.

“I left because-” Her whole face twists in pain so deep he wants to wrap her in his arms and stop anything else from hurting her ever again. “It doesn’t matter why I left. What’s important is that Daisy was one of my fellow agents.”

“No,” he says immediately. “No, Daisy’s-” He stops himself before he can out her as Quake. “Maybe she was once, but I promise you she’s not an agent now.”

Jemma hands him her phone. But it’s not her phone. All the texts are about status updates and reports and someone called “the target.”

“I’m sure there’s an explanation for this,” he says. But that doesn’t stop him scanning through more of the texts or searching for more mentions of the target. He thinks he might know who it is.

“I’m sure there is,” Jemma agrees, but it doesn’t much sound like agreement. She points to the top of the screen, the name A.C. “That’s her nickname for the Director.”

He curses, but keeps it to words she’s not likely to know. “So neither of us wants SHIELD pounding down my door. What’s the plan, agent?”

He regrets it as soon as he says it. The way she smiles when he calls her doc is nothing to the scowl he gets for this.

“The drugs I gave her will keep her under for a few more hours, but SHIELD will be tracking her phone.” She looks Daisy over. “We should take her to the clinic. She’ll be able to blend in among the injured and she’ll think you dropped her off when she took a turn for the worst.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Not a great one, seeing as it brings SHIELD that much closer to Jemma, but it’ll have to do.

It’s so much trouble getting Daisy out of the house and into the car, that they’re on the road by the time it hits him. “You drugged her to keep her asleep?” he asks.

“I’ve been running from SHIELD for more than a year,” Jemma says seriously.

Robbie’s hand tightens on the gearshift. “Did they hurt you? Were they the ones who…?” His eyes dart to her stomach.

“No. And under other circumstances I’d consider Daisy a friend, so please don’t start seeking vengeance on my behalf.”

“Right.” Not that he doesn’t believe her, but there’s more to SHIELD than just Daisy; he’ll take ‘em as they come. And if any of them come near Jemma when she’s worked so hard to keep her distance, he won’t hesitate to let the devil pass a little judgment.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently this is an ongoing fic now. Sigh.
> 
> Also this installment was written for the prompt "what the hell did you do"

Daisy’s on the mend. She’s not great, but now they’ve got her in a SHIELD safehouse and she’s got Lincoln’s bedside manner to see her back to good health, Phil’s confident she’ll be right as rain in no time. The only trouble then is that while she was unconscious and out of touch during the blackouts, Reyes dumped her at his local clinic.

Daisy’s quick to defend the decision, citing Reyes’ wheelchair-bound brother and the very civilian neighborhood he calls home as good reasons for her to be anywhere else, but it’s not much when the clinic has all of the same drawbacks times a hundred.

Still, what’s done is done and now that the LA EMP has been cleaned up, Phil’s taking a detour to the clinic to clean up the mess there. Just because Daisy’s undercover as a rogue agent doesn’t mean they want records of her everywhere.

It’s easy enough at first. With all the chaos in the wake of the attacks, no one questions a stranger flashing city hall credentials at them. They just point him into the back and keep on with their work saving lives. About half an hour in though, Phil realizes he needs a little help.

“Excuse me,” he says to the first nurse who passes at a pace that’s less than sonic. “I’m sorry, I’m having some trouble navigating your system here.”

The nurse—a Sonequa Walsh—gives a sigh that Phil thinks is more to hide how her eyes are rolling behind half-closed lids. “What d’you need, hon?” she asks, joining him in the tight file room.

“I’m looking for a Jane Doe, came in here during the blackout. Mid-twenties. Short, dark hair. Probably wearing a lot of leather.”

Now the eye-roll isn’t so hidden. “You’ll have to be more specific. That describes about half our clients.”

Fair enough. “She had some open wounds on her chest and back, a whole lot of bruising on her arms. She probably left without being released.”

Now the nurse is interested. “She end up somewhere else?”

Phil nods, names the hospital Mike went to before Centipede got its claws in him.

“Yeah, I think I know who you mean. We were just sayin’ she probably didn’t make it too far, beat up like she was.” She glances dismissively at the stacks of papers Phil’s been searching through. “She was one of Dr. Daniels’ patients. She might still have the file.” 

“If you could just point me her way…”

Nurse Walsh is obviously relieved to be able to shrug him off. “Try in the back.” She waves a hand that direction while inching out the door. “She’s been doing patch-jobs all morning.”

“Thanks,” Phil says, but she’s already gone.

The back of the clinic looks worse than the front. That, they’ve at least managed to straighten up to receive new patients but in the far back, past the exam rooms, is an open area that looks to be for receiving supplies and in it are a dozen beds, each with a patient who would be better off at a real hospital. Or not, considering how congested those are now.

There are two nurses and two doctors Phil can see, moving between beds, but his attention is immediately on one of them. For a second he thinks he’s hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time—there was that op in Rome last month where he thought he saw her in a cafe, and he’s been seriously considering ordering Agent Hastings to stop wearing her hair in that damn ponytail because it makes him jump every time he walks past the lab—but no, this is the real deal.

Simmons. Alive and well and-

He ducks behind a storage cabinet before she can turn and see him. Daniels. That’s what the nurse said. Phil’s not about to delude himself into thinking it’s a coincidence and that the other doctor out here is the one he’s looking for. Of course Simmons would take care of Daisy herself. Of course she’d hide the file. Of course she’d take the name of the man whose death left her so heartbroken she abandoned everything.

Phil’s own heart breaks a little at that. Knowing Simmons loved Will enough to leave SHIELD is one thing, knowing she’s still wearing him like an albatross around her neck is another.

He stays where he is for a good five minutes, picking her gentle voice out of the others in the room and just soaking up her presence. She’s been gone nearly a year. No contact with SHIELD, with the team, not even with her family. Fitz says she called her parents once to tell them she was all right and what she was doing, but nothing since then.

He’s not gonna lie. He’s worried.

Simmons is one of the smartest people on the planet and Hydra’s not the only organization that was ever out to get her. Knowing she’s okay, that hits him hard and it takes him a while to recover.

Once he does, he moves. Because he’s been at this long enough to know there’s gotta be more to this than that. It only takes a second to dig up Gabriel Reyes’ file and sure enough there’s her name, Jemma Daniels, right at the top.

He leaves the clinic after that, trusts Simmons to disappear Daisy’s file as much for her own sake as theirs. He’s got work to do.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Eli is exactly as uncooperative as he has been the last three times Phil’s visited him. Probably doesn’t help that this time Phil’s giving off a slight air of desperation. He’s been in the game long enough to recognize it but he can’t help himself after seeing Simmons at the clinic this morning. He wants this op _done_. Lucy Bauer, Momentum Labs, all of it.

Worse than Eli’s stubbornness or Phil’s own failure is what he finds when he finally—nearly an hour after leaving the prison—gets back to the Zephyr. Mack left him high and dry and he _claimed_ he had a good reason – as if there could ever be a good reason to steal Lola.

Said reason is stewing in the containment pod when Phil enters the cargo hold and his feet turn to lead beneath him.

“What the hell did you do?” he asks, meeting Robbie Reyes’ eyes through the window. The kid- man, really, just stares him down, but it’s not him Phil’s talking to.

“This,” Mack says, grinning from ear-to-ear, “is matchstick man. And he’s also Reyes’ nephew. He can help us.”

Phil bites down another curse. The specifics of Daisy’s mission are classified at the highest levels so no one on the team outside of him, May, and Lincoln know she hasn’t really gone rogue in the wake of Hive’s sway or that her mission’s focus has shifted since she first came into contact with the Ghost Rider. Mack has no reason to know that Phil’s well aware of Reyes’ real identity or that he suddenly has cause to want him kept out of this.

But maybe he doesn’t. He holds Reyes’ stare, studying him carefully. This man is a murderer. They can trace more than two dozen dead gangsters and Watchdogs back to him. Daisy’s toed the line on defending those actions, but much as Phil trusts her, she’s not exactly objective when it comes to Inhumans. If Reyes is a threat—to not only criminals who, yes, still deserve honest justice—but also the civilians around him, locking him up now might save a lot of lives. One in particular.

Or maybe he really is one of the good guys. Personally Phil’s more a fan of the law and order approach to things, but there’s a reason they call their heroes Avengers. Sometimes you’ve gotta put someone down.

His left hand itches while he stalks closer to the pod. This isn’t about Reyes, he’s honest enough to admit that to himself. It’s about protecting Simmons. Phil hasn’t been able to do a whole lot of that this last year. All he’s been able to give her—the only thing she’s seemed to _want_ —is distance. From SHIELD, from the team, from her  _life_. (And how sad is that? That after a half a year in hell and another six months of therapy, she thought her best choice was giving up on the life she fought so hard to get back?) And he did give it to her, despite his fears and the team’s vociferous protests. But now? Now that he knows she’s got a connection to a vigilante who in turn has a connection to a mystery that’s claimed nearly a dozen lives so far?

He’ll let her have her space as long as he can. And if Reyes turns out to be as dangerous as he seems, Phil’s gonna bury him deeper than the Fridge’s subbasement ever was.

 


End file.
